Engraving gets cut out using CorelDrawX3 and LaserCut5.3

[Barry Rimmer]

I am trying to engrave a small box design I got from the internet as a .dxf using Corel Draw X3 and LaserCut5.3.
The engrave works OK, but gets cut out of the overall design.
I have enclosed some pictures to show my problem, and the Corel file.
I have only tried to cut page 1, since page 2, which is the whole design, has additional problems.
CorelDrawX3 view.jpg showing the design in Corel, no purple line.
LaserCut Layer.jpg Page 1, showing the cut and engrave colors.
LaserCut View.jpg showing the LaserCut view of the drawing, and the purple line, which cuts out.
Cut Out Box Lid.jpg what happens when I engrave and cut out the outline.
LaserCut Layer Full Box.jpg Page 2, showing even more mysterious colors, and a missing graphic.
The graphics are all 1 bit bmp's.
Any help would be appreciated.

[Kev Williams]

I know zilch about LaserCut, but I notice both "cut" and "engrave" are checked in the Lasercut 'workbox'-- can't you just un-check "cut" to prevent the vector cut?

And, can't the vector lines be ungrouped with everything else in corel and deleted if you don't need them?

[Barry Rimmer]

The cut in red is for the box lid cutout, so I need it. Thanks

[Kev Williams]

To add pictures, goto edit--- then hit "go advanced" - then "manage attachments", from there you can drag and drop the old pics, and add new pics too. And I'd like to see your Corel file. I understand you need the outer cut line, but you should be able to ungroup the lines and graphic from each other, and delete the line around the graphic you don't want. Or at least, change the line to a different outline color and turn THAT color off-- OR, take that line and using the outline tool, make it thicker, which will change it from a vector line to a raster line (at least it does when I do it)

[Barry Rimmer]

They are ungrouped. I need to add another picture (is 4 the limit?) and upload my Corel file. It wouldn't work in advanced edit mode on my original post. I tried it as a new post, didn't work. I tried to upload the Corel file on this post, and it worked.

[Kev Williams]

Well-- I've never had a lesson on how to use Corel, and proof of that is, your graphic has me stumped! Someone else may know the answer to this, but in trying to dissect your graphic, I ran into an issue I've never seen before, and its the fact that your "outline" fills the the entire background solid, and your "paint" fills the inner shapes solid. In this case, the background, which is set at "hairline" (and doesn't matter WHAT it's set at) is green, and the foreground shapes are cyan. If I choose no outline with color, I get a solid cyan rectangle. If I chose outline with no color, I get a solid green rectangle. The original is foreground white (not hollow) and background black... Never seen this before! And I can find no way to make "just" an actual outline of either bounding box to combine with the foreground?

Only way I could fix it was to trace the graphic and separate the elements, delete what I didn't need, then combine it... There's probably an easier way, but I don't know what it is? I still don't understand how the outline color is filling a rectangle...

By the way, these graphics as I opened them had no vector outline of the rectangle, like shown in your 4th photo

This is a partial screenshot-

>edit<== I THOUGHT there was a screenshot-- attached a new one...

[Barry Rimmer]

@Kev, thanks for all the analytical work. In picture 4 you mentioned notice there are more colors. Another interesting thing is that I am missing a bitmap, and the top left one engraved correctly and wasn't cut out. The 4 side panels are all the same! I will try first deleting all but the graphic that worked, and plugging it in to the other three spaces, and see what happens. I will try your suggestion on the box lid graphic. Thanks again for the help, I'll post my results tomorrow, I have an obligation today.

[Ernie Balch]

I had this exact problem, it can be frustrating. I think it happened with that same Epilog sample file. Somehow an outline box got associated with the graphic, I could not select it for deletion until I changed the viewing order to bring it to the front. Now days when weird things start to happen with lasercut I just exit Corel and reload it. (Like rebooting windows in the old days)

[Barry Rimmer]

@Ernie, Thanks for the thought, I will also try along with Kev's suggestion today.

[Barry Rimmer]

I got it to cut, however, none of the ideas worked, but Dean of LegacyLasers had a suggestion which did work. Upload the drawing to LaserCut, turn off the cut color, and engrave all the rest. Then delete the graphics, upload the drawing again, and cut the cut color. Worked perfectly. Thanks for all the help. Barry

[Cliff Land]

I have had this problem as well. I think my fix was to make sure that the image is on the first layer in the properties window in corel and that it was the only item on that layer.

[john passek]

Why couldn't you just run the job from Corel instead of going through lasercut, is it due to the laser you are using?. I took your file, which I had to convert to line art, switched to wireframe ,ungrouped the graphics, found that there was a double line around each ungrouped part ,deleted the double lines fixed some of the missing parts and deselected the hairlines from the graphics only. switched back to normal view ,sent it over to my laser and it worked, (maybe dumb luck on my part).